


Another Heroine

by Morvidra



Category: Amelia Peabody - Elizabeth Peters
Genre: Canon scene - alternate POV, Collection: Purimgifts Extras, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:27:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6357082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morvidra/pseuds/Morvidra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scene in "The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog" when there were some nocturnal disruptions, as told from Evelyn's POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Heroine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



Evelyn woke from a dream, and for one confused moment thought she was still asleep. The blood-curdling shrieking, combined as it was with growls of a definitely feline nature, reminded her strongly of the glorious winters spent excavating and investigating in Egypt. There had been plenty of screaming then – usually coming from people who had tangled with Evelyn’s fearsome sister-in-law Amelia, and encountered the wrong end of her parasol.

Beside her, Walter said: “Hrrumph! Urgh – wha-?” and Evelyn shook off the last traces of her dream. She was in England, at her ancestral home of Chalfont Castle, and the sounds were coming from somewhere in the grounds. Her mind immediately sprang to the lion. It ought to be in its enclosure, but… was it possible it had escaped? Or, she wondered uneasily, had it perhaps been released?

Walter, always slow to waken, was flailing about getting entangled in the bedclothes, and Evelyn moved hastily out of reach, incidentally departing the bed in the process. Flinging on dressing gown and slippers, she hurried from the room, stopping only briefly to retrieve the weapon from its hiding place at the back of the wardrobe. 

She heard Walter call after her as she left, but as the words seemed to have been muffled by blankets, she could easily pretend not to have heard. He would undoubtedly follow as soon as he could extricate himself, but the screaming sound had stopped abruptly, and Evelyn was unsure as to whether that was a good sign. Her decision to avoid the long route to the front door and take the more speedy exit of the French windows in the sitting room was thus understandable, but no sooner had she flung open the sitting room door than she became aware that she was not alone in the room.

To be precise, the intruder had dropped his dark-lantern and exclaimed loudly, evidently in surprise at Evelyn’s sudden entrance. The language was nothing to shock a woman who had been acquainted with Radcliffe Emerson for more than a decade, and Evelyn, who had not stopped to light a candle and whose eyes were thus quite well-adjusted to the dark, saw a thick-set man stooping by the escritoire, his hand still grasping the handle of the central drawer. The windows swung open in the night air, and the dark-lantern and – Evelyn noted – the cudgel leaning against the desk left no doubt that the man’s purpose in entering was a nefarious one.

If she had not been holding her parasol, Evelyn might have retreated, or perhaps screamed for help. But the blood of the Chalfonts rose in Evelyn’s breast at the sight of the intrusion, and with a swift bound she crossed the room and landed a valiant blow to the man’s head.

She was never afterwards able to reconstruct the following events with any coherency. Certainly the man had been injured by her attack, but not knocked unconscious, for he was able to seize his cudgel and fend off several of her subsequent attacks. Quite a few of her blows must have landed, however, for he was observed afterwards to be in a somewhat battered condition. Evelyn also had some scattered recollections of shouting “Take that!” and “You villain”, and other such phrases of a melodramatic nature. Whatever the case, Evelyn paused for breath, and found that she and Ramses – when had Ramses arrived on the scene? – were standing over the intruder, now bound and thoroughly subdued.

Ramses appeared somewhat stunned by the situation, as his normal loquacity was entirely absent; in fact, he had barely managed to close his mouth (which had fallen open) before Walter arrived on the scene. Walter had clearly exited the house through the front door, and had thus missed the sitting-room drama. He had acquired a tail in the form of Bob and Jerry, the footmen who were theoretically on night patrol – although Evelyn noted that they also seemed to have been woken recently – and all three had clearly been running hard, and were somewhat out of breath.

“Evelyn!” Walter puffed, clearly intending to shout. “What the dickens – what was that noise?” He took a step into the room, and the light of his lantern fell on the body.

“Merely a burglar, Walter,” Evelyn said hurriedly. “Do not be concerned, all is well—!”

That was as far as she got before Walter had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her hard. And then he had embraced her, with equal fervour.

“You – burglar – could have been killed!” came incoherently from Walter’s lips, which were at this point pressed against her ear.

“No, my dear, I was perfectly safe,” Evelyn murmured reasurringly. “I had my parasol—”

“Parasol!” Walter’s shout did not quite deafen Evelyn, as she had had the forethought to move her head away slightly, and he set her down with a thump. “Do you mean to tell me that you had the effrontery, the sheer gall, to confront an armed intruder with nothing but a parasol?” Walter by this point had grasped his hair with both hands and was tugging it. “My God – I don’t know how Radcliffe copes!” Then his hands fell to his sides. “But the screaming, Evelyn – it was screaming that wakened us.”

“Yes, my dear, screaming and snarling,” Evelyn agreed. “But I am afraid I do not know the cause – I was rather delayed by dealing with the attempted burglary.”

There was a small sound as of a throat being cleared.

“Aunt Evelyn – Uncle Walter. I rather fear that I may be able to assist in the solution to your nocturnal awakening…”


End file.
